Version:
1/25/12

picture of the week

thought-bite of the week:

"[I]n these countries nobody would dream of going out to look for alpine plants, or to study rock strata, or take barometers up to high altitudes. They are used to a dull domestic life; [apparently] they live not to enjoy life but to prolong it."
(Humboldt, "Personal Narrative", from Jaguars and Electric Eels, ed. & trans. Wilson, p. 12)

mini-text of the week (start):

"The farm we lodged at was a fine sugar-cane plantation.… The owner's house is situated on a hillock surrounded by huts for the negroes.…"

Humboldt, "Personal Narrative", from Jaguars and Electric Eels, ed. & trans. Wilson, p. 22 (read more)

<< top (held over from Week 2): Humboldt's canoe (source: Botting, Humboldt and the Cosmos, p. 103 [0027])
<<bottom: Humboldt, Bonpland, and their scientific equipment (source: Botting, Humboldt and the Cosmos, p. 98-9 [0026])
click on image to see full-size graphic

(X') = anticipated time in minutes (total=75)

(0001) etc.=item in Humboldt Project document collection

Key to notes added AFTER the class meets:

√ = topic / activity that was adequately dealt with during the class

+ = topic that was started but needs more attention & will be resumed at next / subsequent meeting(s)

- = a topic / activity that was proposed though not begun, but will be taken up later

Struckthrough text like this = a topic / activity that was proposed but not included is not going to be taken up after all

Italic bold green text like this = comments after the meeting

+

(10') Mini-text of the week: 1) What sorts of people did Humboldt encounter in Venezuela? (=an informal quiz on the Jaguars and Electric Eels reading). 2) What do we know about prices in the past (food, housing, wages, etc.), and how much can we compare them to the present (= yet another dimensions of "interpreting the past"). (Maybe save for next meeting:) 3) The tricky topic of slavery.

√

(30') Review of last week's quantitative activity and expansion to applications related to travel, exploration, and sustainability (basic quantities worksheet stage 3 • basic quantities worksheet stage 4). Comment: Last week people filled in a fair amount of quantities, but indicated very little about how they actually determined those quantities (whether by showing calculations or by giving the sources of their information, for example "personal experience on a flight" or "remembered from middle school math").

√

(10') more about Humboldt-named schools and their role in this course; featured schools: PDX, Arizona, CA (Humboldt BAY HS), Illinois (AvH Chicago), NYC, Saskatchewan, Mexico City, Puebla, Berlin-Tegel, Hamburg, Rüsselsheim, Kazakhstan; reinterpreting the past better for ourselves by (re)interpreting it for others.

+

(10') presentation about educational standards and their parts in the course: 1) evaluating own education; 2) helping others to learn; preview of upcoming writing assignment and skills questionnaire. Documents: Oregon preK-12 standards for Visual & Performing Arts (0693), especially pp. 8-10, 12, 14, & (especially) 26. Discussion topic: which standards were addressed by writing about the Humboldt portrait?

√

(10') about writing skills - Aaron will do some of this in the mentor workshops

√

(5') Previews: mentor workshops and next class meeting; note also how I have annotated the outlines for previous meetings with comments about what happened during them; portraits of ourselves as environmentalist-explorers. At same time: a leftover from the Hawaiian trip - tutorial and mini-quiz about chocolate, macadamia nuts, and coffee. :-) While you're thinking about such things, look at Jaguars and Electric Eels (p. 21) and these links (link 1 • link 2) to see how modern AvH was in his beverages, and read Jaguars p. 44 about his fashionable food interests (part of answers to the mini-quiz).